Maya Angelou And Feminism

The Feminism approach behind Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman A mother, an actress, an author, a poet, a civil rights activist, and more importantly, a survivor. It takes a strong woman to be a phenomenal woman. Maya Angelou was the second born child of Bailey and Vivian Johnson. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri as Marguerite Johnson on the fourth of April in 1928, although she and her brother, Bailey Jr., for the most part, grew up with their grandmother in Arkansas (Hagan). Angelou got her nickname “Maya” because her brother Bailey never called her Marguerite, instead called her “Mya Sister” which eventually lead to the nickname Maya, which has stuck ever since. Angelou had a rough childhood in the beginning, she bounced around between

She believed in many things. She believed in equal rights for women, African Americans, segregation, the LGBTQ+ community, and so much more. Most notably, she worked with Dr. King, Malcom X and Nelson Mandela. She not only participated in the civil rights act in the 1950’s-1960’s, but she was also on the staff (Nichols). She, along with a number of other actors, came together and organized a historic fundraising revue for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) (Nichols). Which Angelou served as a Northern Coordinator for two years (Hagan). She left the SCLC in 1960 and she moved to Egypt with her husband Tosh Angelo so she could be an associate editor of the Arab Observer. Soon after moving to Egypt, Angelou’s marriage dissolved. She later moved to Ghana to be a lecturer at the University of Ghana (Hagan). When the March on Washington in 1963 took place, although Angelou was still hundreds of thousands of miles away, she still marched in solidarity. After her marriage with Tosh Angelo’s ended, Angelou won a scholarship to study dance with Pearl Purple Onion, wrote and produced screenplays, and published her first book in 1970, which jumpstarted her career of book writing and poetry (Hagan). Maya Angelou had a long, busy and distinguished career. Angelou published a total of seven autobiographies, three books and several books of poetry (Hagan). Most of which are very well known, a few have some form of nomination for awards and all of her writings have some humor in it, as Angelou believed that everyone needs a good laugh. In 1993, Angelou read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” during the inauguration of Bill Clinton, who she endorsed and she would later endorse his wife, Hilary Clinton in her presidential run in 2008. She always said this was a high point of her career (Nichols). She was and still is the only person to read a poem at a presidential inauguration besides, Richard Blanco